Writer-director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi takes a slender Haruki Murakami short story and expands it into three captivating, enigmatic hours with a slow-burn drama that’s full of quiet swells that steal up and sweep you away. The Japanese filmmaker, who is finally breaking through around the world, has been compared with the great Yasujirō Ozu and, well… fair. His undemonstrative camerawork, gentle rhythms and fascination with the emotional hinterlands of troubled people bring a similarly soulful gaze to the bustle of modern life as Ozu did to mid-century Japan.
The fact that the film’s opening credits don’t roll until more than 40 minutes in – by which point they practically qualify as jump shock – gives a hint of just how ruminative Hamaguchi’s filmmaking style is. But, crucially, it’s never remotely meandering, as theatre director Yusuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima), reeling from the sudden death of his screenwriter wife, Oto, heads south to Hiroshima to stage a version of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. His burgeoning odd-couple kinship with his young female chauffeur (Toko Miura) is beautifully observed, as she spirits him around in his vintage red Saab 900.
Oto’s death is dealt with in Drive My Car‘s enigmatic pre-credit stretch but the mysteries she leaves behind hang over the remainder of the film.
The genius that underpins this beautifully acted film lies is the way Hamaguchi’s screenplay takes the themes of Murakami’s story – loss, love, jealousy, healing – and finds echoes of them in Chekhov’s famous play. As Yusuke listens to his wife’s recorded line readings in the car, he’s navigating two mirroring layers of meaning: Is life imitating art or vice versa? Vanya’s world and Yusuke’s are equally brittle, equally caught between doom and happiness. What a clever way to show art’s power to articulate the hurt we find hard to express.
